A Little On The Cool Side

The temperature probably struggled to about 22 degrees here yesterday with cloudy and showery weather. This is probably not my 'best' photo which Trish took just to show me up wearing socks with shorts. Today is a little warmer with more sun around. It should get to the mid 20's OK. Overnight showers and wet roads means I didn't get a bike ride in again this morning. I tipped another 10mls out of the rain gauge today.

Sometimes the car's brake lights don't switch off so it is booked in to be looked at next Wednesday afternoon. It may need a new switch or a 'stopper' (whatever that is).

The old PC still isn't doing its thing properly. Yesterday I started it 16 times and it worked perfectly on 13 of those startups. This morning it decided to turn itself off and I haven't been able to restart it. I will let it sit for an hour or so without the power lead attached and see if it runs again. It had previously started perfectly on a couple of occasions. Its behaviour is further evidence I did the right thing by having the new one built.

I popped into Aldi in Caloundra yesterday and bought a 11 fin oil heater for about $50. We need some heating here for about 6 weeks of the year from mid June through to the end of July.

I put another brew on this morning. I have a beer I am drinking at the moment which took well over the recommended time to brew which is between 5 and 7 days. This one took over 11 days which indicated something went wrong. It doesn't taste too good so I mix either lemonade or Stones Green Ginger Wine with it to make it OK. I have tipped a few bottles of the beer out as well. I think they have just about all gone now!

I will be bottle washing and bottling during next week.

Trish is at Quilter's this morning. Her laptop continues to work beautifully.

I Haven't Been Bike riding For a Week!

Consistent showery weather has meant it is now almost a week since I last rode the bike. The 1 ml of rain which fell early yesterday was just before my ride and made roads and pathways wet. The weather remained threatening for much of the morning.

15mls during Wednesday and overnight meant no riding again this morning.

After a investigating the old PC on Tuesday evening Scott believed the problem was most likely the computer ram. He removed two original sticks of 1GB ram and left the PC running the one new 2GB stick. It ran beautifully for him. I spent much of yesterday reformatting and setting up the PC again.

This morning I restarted the old PC a couple of times and all was perfect until .... it just wouldn't start! The photo left shows where it 'hangs'. I am beginning to believe the problem therefore may be on the mother board. But I am no expert! However you leave it sit for an hour, then come back and turn it on again, it starts up and runs perfectly!

The new PC runs perfectly!

We watched the footy on TV on Tuesday afternoon and my side eventually got up and won the match. Wednesday morning Trish went to Stitchers and today she is at the Tourist Info Centre again. I am at home turning the old PC on and off to see how it starts.

Already we are 100mls over the regular April rainfall average. Right now we are 600mls above average rainfall for this time of year, 1350mls and should be about 750mls!

Still Cloudy, Overcast And Cool!

It is about 22 degrees outside as I type. Almost cool enough for tracksuit trousers and socks! Overnight we have continued to endure cooler showery weather, there were 14mls in the rain gauge this morning.

The computer guy Scott called yesterday about checking out the older PC. He will come over tonight and run a couple of tests on it to confirm the problem is the hard disk drive. If it does come up as being 'sick' he will install a temp hard drive in the computer to give it a good test. Looks like I will be doing some reformatting on the old PC tomorrow and then we will see how it goes. If the problem disappears I will purchase another hard drive for it. I am not sure what I will do with it then.

Scott later popped in to collect a copy of the "loader" I use for Windows 7. After installing Windows 7 (you don't put any registration info in at all) you can have free access to Windows 7 operating system for 30 days. Just run this little program, restart your PC and check the Properties of "Computer" and it now tells you it is now a fully activated version! It now does official updates and everything.

Scott had a mate who was installing Windows 7 so he thought he would give the "Loader" a try.

Trish is doing volunteer work at the Tourist Information Centre this morning and we are both watching our footy teams play each other on TV this afternoon.

A Damp Anzac Day

After some sensational weather over the last week, today we have overcast and grey skies. We also have some "Melbourne Rain", the kind of rain where it falls for an hour and there is a mere 1 ml in the rain gauge.

Today is Anzac Day so this morning everything is closed. Most things have been closed for much of the weekend around here with Easter and Anzac Day occurring on the same weekend. Large supermarkets in Caloundra were closed Friday, Sunday and will be closed today (Monday) and tomorrow Tuesday! Our smaller IGA Supermarket here on the estate is open for all of those days except for Good Friday. Penalty rates for workers have meant most stores are not opening at all over the Easter Break.

Our phone service hasn't skipped a beat since removing the faulty wall filter plate. We have had an occasional problem previously with our voip phone service as well. We will leave the wall filter off for a few weeks and see if the voip problem also disappears. Already we have swapped the cordless phones over, tried two separate modem/routers but the occasional voip problem has re occurred. Maybe the occasional fault was also caused by the faulty wall plate filter?

I had an interesting computer problem with a member at Computer Club on Saturday. She had bought a Telstra Broadband Wireless dongle on Thursday but she couldn't connect to the mobile broadband service. The computer is meant to get the driver software off the dongle itself, self install and then connect to the internet via the mobile phone network. Each time she plugged the dongle usb into her computer it thought it was her printer! So it wouldn't install the dongle software.

I had something like this happen before. Eventually I found another version of the mobile broadband install software on the Telstra website. That isn't an easy site to find out what you want to know on. Things are hidden and you really have to look hard to find stuff. The website however is very good at telling you what it wants you to know though! We downloaded and installed the software via the computer club's web access and ran the install program. We were then prompted to plug the dongle in and eventually got it to work. She was a pretty pleased club member as she needed the dongle web access over Easter as she was visiting her daughter.

My new computer continues to run perfectly. Some jobs it handles very quickly, the benefit of a top processor, sufficient ram and a great video card. The old PC wouldn't start on Saturday and took a couple of hours just to get going. I need to transfer some files off an external HDD I have and the only computer that would recognize it in our house was the old PC. Trish's laptop as well as the new PC wouldn't load the external hard disk drive. It is about to be thrown out too! Things looked drastic when the old PC wouldn't start up.

To get it running again I totally removed all power (removed the power lead) and let it sit for a hour or so. It started OK when I reconnected the power and restarted it.

The movies available for download recently have been all horror stuff or movies with ridiculously low scores. I have taken to looking at UK TV Crime series such as Silent Witness and Waking the Dead to supply our movie needs. I have now discovered a couple of other new series which get good reviews such as DCI Banks, Zen and a new one due to be available soon called "The Body Farm". The last series is a spin off from Waking The Dead.

We tripped into Caloundra yesterday to a couple of markets. One we hadn't been to for some time so we thought we would give it a look again. It is twice as big as it used to be with heaps of cheap locally grown vegetables. We will be going back there again! The 'big' market in the main street was very crowded with holiday makers coming to Caloundra for the Easter break. We didn't stay in town too long after that, it was too crowded!

We are enjoying plenty of footy on TV this weekend. Our teams play each other tomorrow, Tuesday. Two great matches are on today which is great.

A Glorious Day For Good Friday

Our home phone service has been working perfectly. The internet has been rock solid and several home phone calls have been received and worked perfectly, all without the Wall Phone Filter being attached. The offending item can be seen here to the left.

I have been speaking with a mate, Barry from down in Melbourne who used to work for Telstra. He commented that the problem I experienced was not unusual and that type of internet filter in particular can be very touchy. Scott (the guy who put the new PC together) also believes the wall phone filter was most likely the culprit.

As the phone is now perfect, so too is the weather today. There is hardly a cloud in the sky. This photo was taken this morning on my daily bike ride. It was a stunning morning. It is expected to get to around 27 degrees this afternoon. I even managed a swim this morning, the pool was just under 24 degrees.

Click on either photo for a larger view, then click on "Back" to return to this page.

The new PC works very well indeed. I saw one with similar specs for sale from Dell at well over $1500. Mine was well under $900. However the Dell PC came with a warranty and Windows 7. I have my 'own' copy of Windows 7 installed on it. The Dell PC also has a 12 month warranty. Scott will be back later (probably after Easter) to look at the old PC and try to get it working nicely again. He still strongly believes the problem is the hard disk drive in the old PC.